Brazilian farmer held over slave-case murders

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Brasilia: Police have arrested one of the world's top bean growers, accusing him of ordering the execution of three labour inspectors who were investigating reports of slavery on one of his plantations.

Norberto Manica, a rancher and businessman, was arrested in southern Brazil and accused of forming the gang that ambushed and killed the labour inspectors and their driver in January, police said.

A judge in the central state of Minas Gerais, where the agents from the Labour Ministry were shot inside their truck, ordered Manica to be held in custody.

"There was already strong and sufficient evidence he ordered this after contradictions he made during questioning," a police spokesman said of Manica's arrest in Corbelia, in the state of Parana.

The killings embarrassed the Government by highlighting the violence involved in modern-day slavery, which is still common in the countryside more than a century after Brazil formally abolished slavery.

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The practice, whereby poor workers incur large debts, forcing them to stay on isolated farms, is mostly found in the impoverished north-east. However, these killings took place in Unai, a town just 140 kilometres from the capital, Brasilia.

The Government estimates 25,000 people work as slaves, but rights organisations say the figure could be much higher. Labour inspectors, like the ones who were killed, have this year freed 5000 people from slave-like conditions through surprise raids on farms.

Manica, said to be Brazil's biggest individual bean grower, had already been fined for labour conditions on his plantation, police said. Manica, who also has holdings in the grain producing southern state of Parana, has denied any role in the killings.

Last month police arrested four men who admitted being the hired killers who shot the investigators in their car. Police arrested three others who they suspect hired the gunmen.